


Hide All Your Secrets In The Dark, You Try To Run But Fall Apart

by Siguna



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Memory Loss, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-20
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2018-01-20 03:35:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1495066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siguna/pseuds/Siguna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’ll be looking to collect him. The helicarrier is mostly done crashing down when he pulls out of the mess of debris and black water. Maybe they’ll think he died in the explosion – maybe they won’t come looking. He could just leave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hide All Your Secrets In The Dark, You Try To Run But Fall Apart

**Author's Note:**

> WINTER SOLDIER SPOILERS. I feel like everyone is writing the same post-CATWS fic given how the film ends (where does Bucky go next/Steve looking for him or vice versa) so here is my contribution because I am just so emotionally compromised by this film and really needed to write something. Picks up pretty much where the film left off. Title is from Back to the Start by Mr. Little Jeans.

They’ll be looking to collect him. The helicarrier is mostly done crashing down when he pulls out of the mess of debris and black water. Maybe they’ll think he died in the explosion – maybe they won’t come looking. He could just leave.

He lets go of the other man, waits to see him breathe before leaving him unconscious on the beach.

Maybe they do come after him. Right now he feels like he could take out every last one.

Gunshots fire in the distance. He tenses up but can tell they’re not Hydra guns. Sirens start to sound, and he starts to run.  

In the city people don’t notice him much. There are lights everywhere and screens with people talking and the handler’s face comes up. They call him a terrorist and say he’s dead. 

He finds an alley where there’s no one and it’s quiet, hunches into a corner and waits for it to get darker.

 

The heat from pulsing machines is thick around him and someone’s talking, he can’t see their face. “… disappointed at how that went, but you’ll finish the mission next time, yes?” His vision starts to clear up and the handler’s face comes into view, looking at him calmly. He looks down at the blood on his hands and tries to pinpoint where it went wrong. Somebody calling him by a name. That can’t be right? The handler’s fist collides with his jaw but that doesn’t mean anything. He looks up because he needs the handler to explain, because he always explains, always tells him what he needs to do. The handler shakes his head. “He’s unstable. We’ll have to start over.” They push him back into the embrace of the restraints and the usual rush of anxiety pulses through him, both fists clenching as the metal clamps onto his head and he braces himself as best as he’s learned, chest thudding and then he’s screaming through clenched teeth –  

– the alley is still dark as he gasps awake, the scream garbled in his mouth and someone shaking him by the shoulder. He flings his arm out reflexively and leaps to his feet, eyes wide and shoulders heaving back as he stares at the unfamiliar man he’s just shoved to the ground, and his mind whirrs – handler, target, bystander? Bystander –

“Easy, son, sorry to give you a fright. You alright there? Looked like you were havin’ a fit.”

He continues to stare and says nothing, fist still drawn back. The other man gets up slowly, reaches out. “What’s yer name, son?”

A long moment passes and he lowers his fist. “My – my name is Bucky.” Then he turns on his heels and bolts.

  

Who the hell is Bucky, though.

He thinks about the blond man, bleeding underneath him and calling him friend.

Handler, target, bystander – friend?

 _People are gonna die, Buck_.

He kills people. That’s what he is.

– did Bucky kill people?

People are staring at his arm.

 

“Ey, where do you think you’re goin’ with that?”

The shopkeeper catches at the jacket sleeve as he’s trying to make off with it, grabs him by the arm and that’s a mistake. Bucky has him by the throat in a second and the man sputters. “Hey, alright, put me down now, you can keep the jacket – ” Bucky drops him. The shopkeeper rubs at his neck and doesn’t look angry anymore. “That’s some arm ya got there,” he says, and Bucky backs away. “Woah, calm down now. Look. How’d ya like to earn some cash?”

They call it a ring even though it’s square and there are people cheering as he hammers his fist into someone’s head, which is new. He beats them all (doesn’t have to kill them). Then there’s money that the shopkeeper splits with him.

He doesn’t want to come back.

The shopkeeper doesn’t like that, and getting in Bucky’s way when he tries to leave is another mistake.

 

He can buy food now though, finds a vendor and gets some kind of stuffed pastry that looks good because it’s steaming and he doesn’t know when it was he last ate. He wolfs it down in front of the stand and then buys two more. Mostly, he appreciates the warmth in his throat as the cold whips on his skin.

The blond man comes up on the screens and he goes over to watch. They say he’s in the hospital and that’s – that’s good, that he’s okay.

“He’s planning to come after you, you know.”

Bucky jumps back, metal fingers clenching before he sees that it’s her. The red-haired woman. Target? “Relax,” she says. He doesn’t. “I’m not here to hurt you, but I won’t hesitate to. Come with me?” She holds out her hand.

He frowns and unclenches his fist.

They go to her car. He doesn’t know her name. “Natasha,” she says. “What do I call you?”

“Bucky.” (My name is Bucky.)

She nods. “Steve doesn’t know I came to find you.” Steve is the blond man. “Steve.” He says it out loud. “How did you find me?”

“Guy with a metal arm shows up at a wrestling gig and beats the crap out of everyone? People tweet. Really bad idea, I would’ve figured you’d be laying low.”

“Tweet?” he repeats. That makes her smile, and he doesn’t know why, and doesn’t remember the last time someone smiled at him. He looks away and down at his hand. Flexing the metal knuckles, in and out. “Are you hurt?” she asks. He shrugs. “Where are we going?”

“Smithsonian.”

“What the hell is a smithsonian?”

 

James Buchanan Barnes was a hero who fought alongside Captain America, helped take down Hydra and died for the cause.

It’s his face, though.

“You okay?” Natasha asks, standing back from him a little. He looks away from the display and drops his head so that his hair falls over his eyes.

“That _is_ you,” she says. He hunches his head down lower and his eyebrows knit together hard. His skin is crawling under the high-neck leather combat suit that he’s still wearing underneath the jacket, caked in salt and sweat and blood and grime, smelling of metal and death, and _this_ is him.

 _Barnes is the only Howling Commando to give his life in service to this country,_ says the exhibition recording. “Didn’t, did I though,” Bucky says. Not Bucky though, because Bucky is a hero, and he isn’t that.

“This life isn’t the one you had then,” Natasha tells him. She holds her hand out, like she did before. “Come with me?”

He takes her other hand, the one on the side of his real arm.

“You okay?” she repeats as they leave.

“I’m – I’m unstable.”

 

They go to her flat that she says nobody knows about. He does now, and he’s not sure what to make of that. She shows him the shower; he sets the water to burning and wants it to beat down on him forever, wash away all the death and the cold.

She gives him clothes too, and they’re soft and loose and not what he’s used to. “You can burn the old ones,” he says.

“I know.” She gestures to a chair and he sits, and feels so tired. He closes his eyes. Leans back. Breathes. “I tried to kill you.”

“It wasn’t your idea.”

“They put a mission in my head, I get it done.”

“And then?”

“They fix me. Shock my brain. I wait for the next mission. Frozen sometimes, before. I got better and they stopped freezing me as much.”

“Better, as in – more compliant.”

He looks up and she’s looking at him strange, and it’s not like anyone’s ever looked at him before. She looks sad. He ducks his head down and stares at his hands, metal knuckles curling, crunching. Sees all the lives they’ve taken, all the bodies he’s torn apart.

“People are defined by their choices,” she says finally. “And those missions weren’t your choice.”

People, though. The Winter Soldier is a tool.

– was a tool?

His fingers clench shut. “They’re not going to get me back.”

“They’re not,” she agrees fiercely.

“I was somebody, once.”

“You are somebody.”

“I can try to be.”

 

Natasha sets up the couch for him but he’s too tense for sleep despite how his body aches, too disgusted with all the times he’s been forced into it. Instead he just lies there until the smell of coffee tells him Natasha is up, and that’s not an exceptionally long time, either. He doubts she slept much herself. He’s rested some, anyway, and it’s the food he cares about. They have a dawn breakfast and Natasha asks him again if he’s hurt. He shakes his head, but – “My arm, though. They always fixed it.” And he frowns into his coffee cup.

“I know someone who can take a look,” she says. “Tony Stark – you actually knew his father, Howard.”

“Tony Stark,” he repeats. “Howard.” Makes it familiar in his mind, because it’s not.

They’re halfway to New York when she gets the call and they tell her Steve’s woken up. She talks to him briefly, says things like “Stay put,” and “I’ll fill you in soon.” When she hangs up she looks slightly upset, and it’s Bucky’s turn to ask if she’s okay. “I have to tell him about you,” she says. “And he’ll want to see you.” He doesn’t answer, and she doesn’t say anything more.

 

Tony Stark doesn’t stop talking.

“Natasha, I just love it when you override all my security protocols and waltz in here with haggard strangers. Who is this?”

“My name is Bucky.” (My name, my.)

“Ah,” Tony says. To Natasha’s questioning look he adds, “Hill filled me in. By the way, I could’ve flown over? Seriously, there will come a day when Steve trying to take down aircrafts with a shield is just not going to cut it.” He pauses. “How is he?”

“He’s fine. Awake. And he doesn’t know we’re here.”

“Why are you here, again?”

 

When Bucky is stripped to the waist in a chair surrounded by machines and Tony starts hooking him up to probes, he breaks a sweat. His breathing sticks and he struggles for air, throat straining. Tony backs away. “Nat, I think he’s having an anxiety attack.”

Bucky shuts his eyes, breathing in harder, jaw shaking. Someone’s hand, Natasha’s, is on his shoulder and her voice tells him to calm down, says they’re here to help. “Tony’s just going to look at your arm, Bucky. Fix it, like you wanted. Nobody’s going to do anything you don’t want.” He exhales, slowly, then again until his chest stops heaving.

When he opens his eyes Tony is there, waiting to make sure he’s settled down before cautiously pulling up some instruments, and he starts by scraping off the red star that’s branded to Bucky’s shoulder.

 

“Natasha,” Tony says, when Bucky is cross-legged on the floor quietly testing his fixed arm, flexing the joints and trying out all the adjustment points. Tony did a good job and is bursting with more ideas, wants Bucky to let him upgrade it later. His voice comes from the bar area where he’s pouring a drink for Natasha. “Where are you staying now?”

“I have something temporary, won’t be there for long. Why?”

“This whole thing with Hydra. This is… things are only starting to get bad. SHIELD is in the ground and we, the Avengers, or whatever, we need to regroup. Did you know Hill is working at Stark now?”

Most of what Tony is saying goes over Bucky’s head, and he’s only half-listening, but Natasha leans forward as Tony hands her the drink. “What are you saying, exactly?”

“I’m sure you noticed the big ‘A’ on the front of this building, Nat, and it’s not a tribute to the letter Steve has plastered to his forehead. What I’m saying is what I proposed to SHIELD a year ago: Stark Industries becomes the Avengers’ official backer. This is headquarters, Avengers Tower if you will. Bruce already has a floor here, and I just offered Hill an apartment.”

“So, what, you’re offering me one too?”

“I know your covers are all blown. You’d be safe here. And Clint, doesn’t he live in a now probably compromised SHIELD barracks or whatever? Steve, and heck, Bucky too if he wants.”

Bucky looks up, his raised arm relaxing. “You want me to live here?”

Tony turns to him. “What these Hydra goons did to you, I’m thinking you want a part in taking them down.”

“Yes,” Bucky says immediately. “If you’re going after them, I’m in.”

“Bucky’s in,” Tony repeats, looking back at Natasha. “Nat, you know I’m right. I don’t know what capacity SHIELD is going to continue to exist in, Hill tells me Coulson’s people are still dealing with some stuff, but she came to me for a reason.”

Natasha is silent for a moment. “Did Hill mention Thor’s been staying in London?”

“The hell’s he in London for? Well, we can ask him too. Clint?”

“Afghanistan on an op, he’ll be back in two days. We should talk to Steve, though.”

“Right on. Jarvis, call Steve.”  

 

Bucky retreats to Tony’s balcony, where the night breeze catches on the roughness of his skin and he shivers but doesn’t feel cold. (He knows cold, lives with its shadow in the cores of his bones.) Eventually Natasha comes out to find him. “So, Steve and Sam are heading over here tomorrow.”

“Sam?”

“With the wings. You fought him.”

“Oh. Sam.” He repeats it to remember. “Sam Wilson, the Falcon,” Natasha adds. He nods. She comes closer, leans with her back against the railing and folds her arms. “You’ve been avoiding Steve.”

He opens his hand then curls the fingers back in, listening to the robotic hum, not the memories he wants. “Something he said. I don’t know if I remember it, or if I think I do because he said it. I remember – a little bit. Get snatches back, these past couple days. Something teasing in the back of my brain, nobody to shock it out of me. I need more time.”

“Steve doesn’t need you to have it all back, Buck. He just needs you.”

“Not me though, am I?” He lets his hand drop to the railing, grips it hard. Her hand finds his flesh one. “We wouldn’t be standing here if you weren’t.”

He doesn’t answer that, but turns to her. “Natasha, tell me about the Avengers.”

 

It might be the distance, or the time built up between then and now, or that he’s just plain tired, but when Tony puts him and Natasha each in a suite Bucky finally sleeps. Maybe it’s the room; it’s so light and spacious and just _nice_. He sleeps fitfully and keeps waking up and drifting back, but feels better by morning.

Morning is when Steve shows up, Sam close at his side. Too close. Bucky hangs back, a whisper of a memory tugging at his mind, the shadow of another. Steve keeps his distance but offers a cautious smile, and Bucky doesn’t know what to do with that, feels like his mouth might crack if he tries to reciprocate it, not built for smiles, not in so long.

“You’re my friend,” he says instead, and the words don’t feel foreign in his mouth, and that’s something they can both work with.

 

They go out, back to Brooklyn where Steve says they grew up, just the two of them after Steve tells Sam it’s okay. Sam doesn’t tell Steve to be careful but it’s in his face, and Bucky doesn’t blame him but something about it makes him upset. He pushes it away, out of his mind and focuses on Steve, on this alley they’re standing in and the kid who’s getting beat down but keeps stumbling back up and then Bucky is swinging, metal fist colliding with brick, making it crumble, a heap at his feet. Steve reaches for him, and he’s too tall.

“You were smaller,” Bucky says, falling back against the wall and sliding down to the ground, head in his hands, trying to hang onto the thread of memory. Steve was smaller and then he wasn’t and something’s missing, he can’t latch onto it. Shuts his eyes and tries, but it’s gone. He looks up and Steve is close and gentle-eyed. “I lost it,” Bucky says.

“You’ll get it back.” Steve doesn’t miss a beat, helps him up and they go on walking.

“It’s different now, than when we lived here, I hardly recognize it myself.” Steve waves at places, talks about what used to be there and Bucky thinks he sees. They stop in another alley – Bucky stops them – and it starts to come back again. “You were smaller and kept fighting back even though the bigger guys kept knocking you down, and you got sick a lot and I hated that, and they wouldn’t let you in the army –” he talks rapidly, getting the words out fast as the flashes of memory come to him, making them real by putting them into words, as fast as he can before he loses them “ – but something happened in the army, something made you bigger and stopped you getting sick always.” He frowns, grasping in his mind for more but it’s fading.

“You always had my back,” Steve says. “Before the serum made me stronger and after too. We fought together and made a difference. _You_ did.”

“I saw it in the museum,” Bucky says dubiously, metal fingers rubbing at the back of his hair, still working on assimilating to the idea that he was the person in that picture. Steve looks at him with the same sad expression Natasha had the other night, and Bucky turns away again, dropping his hand to curl his fingers at his side. Steve reaches for him. “Yeah,” he says. “Bucky, it’s – I hate that you have to learn it from the museum but people go there and they read about the hero I had the honor to fight alongside, but it’s more than that, and more than the army or the war, it’s _here_ , it’s this street where we were kids and you looked out for me and I was never alone because I always had you.”

Bucky starts walking again, kicks at a pebble in the street and watches it skid ahead of him. Steve keeps up, hands in his pockets. “I got captured,” Bucky tries, “and you got me out?”

“You pulled me out of the water,” Steve says in return. “Saved me.”

“You saved me first,” Bucky says. “Pulled me back out of my own head.” He stops as soon as he says it, thinks about the words. Pulled him _back_. Him, Bucky Barnes, still buried in there, still the same person. He looks at Steve again and this time the surge of recognition is overwhelming, and then they’re throwing their arms around each other and Bucky can’t hold him tight enough because this is _Steve_ and _goddammit_ he’s missed him.

They stumble forward down the street, laughing brokenly, and Bucky’s entire self swells with the sensation of it. For the first time, he feels like Bucky.

“I can’t, still can’t believe it’s you,” Steve says. “You never stopped believing in me,” Bucky answers. They turn a corner, go down a street they both kind of remember without really knowing where they’re headed, and it doesn’t even matter. “Steve,” Bucky says, “Can I be an Avenger?”

Steve looks at him surprised. “Tony Stark was saying, about going after Hydra,” Bucky says. “I intend to hunt them all down, Steve, end them with these hands, so if – ”

“Bucky, you’re an Avenger if I ever knew one,” Steve cuts him off. “I’d be honored to fight alongside you again.”

Bucky feels his mouth break into an awkward smile and he ducks his head, nodding. “Me too.” Steve grins at him, wide and easy. “Hey, race you back to the tower?”

“The tower’s back in Manhattan, Steve, you can’t – ” but Steve is already taken off, and when Bucky surges after him, he’s grinning, too.


End file.
